Last night I repaired a broken trace on my newly acquired Aztech Sound Galaxy NX PRO :
I38-MMSD802 - NX Pro AZTSSPT0592-U01 AZT-NXPMIX0592 YMF262-M Y N 40-pin Mitsumi & 40-pin Panasonic CD-ROM interface; 50-pin Exp. slot; volume wheel
(At least I think that is the card it is from the specs on the Aztech Sound Galaxy thread here and from the pics I could find on the web). There is no FCC ID (model number on it).
Somebody had tried to repair it before, but it was really ugly and I am not sure if it was even making a connection. Instead of just trying to use a big glob of solder, I ran a wire.
I'm wondering if the smd capacitor next to the trace is messed up as it looks like somebody at the very least soldered it back on. It shouldn't have affected anything but the virtual printer port as it was a trace going to one of the jumpers for it.
Then I tried to get it going in my KT7A build, but was having trouble getting it to detect. I have never set one of these up before, so I am pretty sure that that is probably part of the problem at least.
Will it even detect in a System that fast? It is one of the models that has the 14.318Mhz ocillators so I would think it wouldn't be affected by CPU speed.
It was really late so I didn't mess with it that much. My next step is to disable PnP in the BIOS.
What do I use to configure the IRQ, I/O, and DMA? Is it HWSET like the newer Aztech cards use?
Anybody have a copy of the original instruction manual or actually have one of these cards?
Trying to find actual real information as far as configuration goes is like trying to find a piece of hay in a needle stack.
Edit: found a post here on Vogons that said the installation has to be on real floppy disks or it wont install. Guess I am going to try that as well. Makes sense as it told me that it couldn't find a file that was in the same folder the installer was in. Maybe it is hard coded to look at drive A:
Edit 2: Well, installing via floppy worked... found out that at least 4 of the 3.5" floppy drives I have are bad. I think I am going to get rid of floppy drives and get a floppy emulator for each system. It is just not worth fighting with floppy drives and trying to figure out if it it the disk or the drive that is having problems.
I'll keep my nice USB 2x 3.5" floppy drive for reading disks since it works great. I've also got a stash of old Dell laptop 3.5" floppy drives that are able to be used via USB.
As far as the card goes, no matter what I did, it couldn't find a free DMA.
The FM worked, but the speed was waaaaaaaayyyyyy too fast. I guess this one is speed sensitive as well. A 2.4Ghz Barton must be just a wee bit too fast 🤣
Good news though is that both channels were working. The person I bought the card from said only one channel was working. Maybe my jumper wire fixed that even though it shouldn't have.
The other good news is that this card seems to be really quiet in regards to system noise. Supposedly the Sound Galaxy cards are supposed to pick up a lot of system noise. It is still to be seen if it will be the same on an older system.